


it's you and me, love

by comosum



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Character Study, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Hospitals, Kinda, M/M, erhm, good parenting (not sarcastic guys), richie is straight vibing living in a hospital chair for weeks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22861597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comosum/pseuds/comosum
Summary: Richie wants to live in this limbo forever. Richie wants this limbo to end.Richie wants Eddie to wake up.Or: a soulmates au.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53





	it's you and me, love

**Author's Note:**

> erhm so this has been in my docs for a WHILE. i wanted to finish it all and then post it as a one shot but you know what? i've never posted a chaptered fic before so i thought i should try something new :) please enjoy!! :)
> 
> title from red earth & pouring rain by bear's den
> 
> EDIT 07/05/20: i have decided that since i won’t be continuing this as a chaptered fic this can work as a stand-alone one shot :)

_Softly my right hand fondles my left hand_

_as though it were you._

Mary Oliver

_I know history. There are many names in history_

_but none of them are ours._

Richard Siken

  
  
*

All stories have a beginning. 

Their’s starts like this: as something that feels like it can only exist outside reality. 

It’s like a trick, like the grim reaper is going to appear before all of them and take Eddie away. Like a trade-off, like he gambled too hard. But he doesn’t, and life goes on as it does, in ebbs and troughs. 

In the hospital, Richie makes the chair beside Eddie’s bed his home. He wraps himself up there, and makes it capital-H _His_ with blankets that Mike brings from his apartment. Reds and browns with bits of fluff that come off in tides when he shifts. He readjusts: learns to sleep sitting up, keeps his discomfort to himself; charms the nurses into letting him stay longer than polite. He uses the hospital showers, and scrubs himself raw with 3-in-1 body wash that shares its clinical scent with the whole building. He eats in the canteen when staring at Eddie’s barely living body gets too much, adjusts his eyes to the discordant lighting, works out how to use the coffee machine, makes himself too many espressos and doesn’t wince when they burn his tongue. 

It’s adaptation, he tells himself. He’s _adapting,_ he tells himself again, when his manager calls and he cancels his upcoming tour. Adaptation, and he fires his ghostwriter. Adaptation, and he sends an email to pull out of the skitshow he had been scheduled for. 

He needs to be ready, he tells himself, but even he knows that he’s not sure what he’s readying himself for. But the need is there, so he answers. The need is there, so he listens. 

He’s there for two weeks or so, but it feels like an age. He’s used to becoming part of the scenery, and he does it well here, though it makes him uneasy that he can so easily fall back into the rhythm of Derry, the connotations of destiny and the inevitable never far from the front of his mind. 

For the first couple days, Bill eases in and out of the room and talks to Richie. He talks to Eddie too, crowded around his unresponding body, limp hand clutched in stuttering fist, but his words are hushed and stilted, and Richie finds himself uncomfortable to be in the same room when these one-sided conversations rise, and tends to leave when he senses one coming on. It is, however, a surprise to no one when Bill eases out of the picture completely and hurries back to England. They had all seemed to come to an agreement not to mention the mounting number of phone calls that Bill took from his wife, but they had all noticed all the same. Everyone is sad to see him go, but there is a shared feeling among them that at least this isn’t the end this time, at least they will still remember him when he is gone. The sentiment is surely shared by Bill, who wakes them all up with a text, victim of the time difference, that says “ _remember and love you all”_ every morning, or rather, night. 

Ben and Bev visit together, and it’s hard for anyone to feign shock at the way they fit into each other’s lives. Once everyone’s memories had begun to flood back after dinner at the Jade, the magnetism that seemed to bring them together became old news, just another certainty that Derry had shed the light on. Bev found the split from her husband hard, but was resolute in not showing it. Richie himself only just determined the severity of the situation when Beverly started drifting towards Eddie’s bedside when the nights got tough. She said it was to keep Richie company, but he knew better when she nodded off on his shoulder. He never confronted her though, just let her have the steady comfort of his voice. If nothing else, he could give her that. Eventually, however, Ben and Bev leave Derry too. They head off together to a cabin Ben owns in Northern California. Richie is happy for them. All the losers understand what the sunny balm that seems to have enveloped them both means, but none of them give a name to it. To acknowledge anything certain feels like temptation, and they all know better than anyone what happens when you wave a carrot on a stick in front of fate’s hungry mouth. 

Mike is patient. Richie loves Mike. Kind, _golden_ Mike who stayed in Derry when the rest of them fucked off. Richie plays at playing house with him for a few days before making the Chamberlain Ward his new hangout spot. For those lowlit days he wanders to and fro within the apartment, like a ghost who hasn’t yet learnt to walk through walls. He thumbs through the bookshelves, picks out the most worn paperbacks. Atwood, Morrison, Steinbeck, Keats. Falling back into love with his friends wasn’t something he expected, but finding out what he missed in the decades apart makes it easy. It’s strange, suddenly carrying the weight of this adoration that he was often overwhelmed with as a kid, but it’s warm, _so warm._ He wonders if this is what family is, what he missed out on from being an only child. Mike is planning a new year of travel, and on good days, he will come to Eddie’s bedside with a map and ask Richie about cities and landmarks, where to go, what to see. Richie loves Mike and his endless questions and concerns about train stations and bus services. Thank fuck for those who understand the fear curdling in his abdomen, and thank fuck for those who understand how to rinse it from Richie’s mind. 

On the bad days, Richie doesn’t do much of anything. He sits, desolate, next to Eddie’s bed and stares. He bends himself double in his chair, leaning as close to Eddie’s face as he can stand it. He takes Eddie’s loose hand in his shaking ones and grasps it between them like an extra palm could act as a catalyst and broadcast his prayers. Sometimes the nurses find him like this, in the wee hours of morning, shivering and inconsolable, pressing an unknowing hand to his pallid forehead. Without fail, they duck out of the room, feeling embarrassed, feeling like they’ve walked in on an intimacy that outsiders were never meant to see. In some ways, Richie figures that they are right. He doesn’t mean anyone to ever see him like this, not even Eddie, who is a central character in the plays that unfold in the stage of his ward without him even knowing. 

He doesn’t know what he will do when Eddie wakes up. And he _is_ thinking of it as a _when,_ rather than an _if,_ now, as though what he absently wonders about will have any bearing on reality. Will Eddie be happy to see him, will he be happy that Richie has dropped everything to sit by his side for weeks on end? Will he be happy that he’s neglected to phone Myra, Eddie’s _wife_ , to tell her that her husband is in critical condition, restricted to a hospital in the hometown he never mentioned to her? 

_But…_ most _importantly_ , will Eddie open his eyes, see Richie in the chair across from him, swathed in reds and warm browns, with the afternoon sun illuminating his dozing face, and have the same realisation that Richie did all those weeks ago, in the belly of the beast, miles underground, heart seized up in horror? Will Eddie look at Richie and think _“I have known you all my life, and in all my lives.”_ Will he look at Richie and think _“I remember, I_ remember _,”_ and will he be able to express it out loud, as the indisputable fact that it is?

Richie wants to live in this limbo forever. Richie wants this limbo to end. 

Richie wants Eddie to wake up.

*

Maybe their story starts a different way.

There is a time before print, where kingdoms rule, and their borders flow into each other freely like rivers to the sea. It is a time of magic, and those that believe in it. The food is rich, the fields are lush. Years pass in a blur of laughter and nights warmed by song, and games played by the loved in taverns. 

There is a farmhand, whose palms are rough, and smiles are frequent. There is a young prince, whose robes are red, and eyes are fond. 

They are drawn to each other, like those in the stories that mages tell around bonfires. An unexplainable tug, an inability to look away. 

Love can flood a valley, if it wants. And it wants, it _wants_. 

Their tale is told in poetry over hot soup and bread for generations; birth of the oral tradition. 

This was how it started. 

*

Above Eddie’s bed, is a painting. 

Richie doesn’t notice it straight away; he’s too busy grieving a man that is still breathing, as if he needs to allocate the proper time for it. As if, if Eddie does die, he knows he won’t be around long enough afterwards to grieve _well enough,_ as if he needs to start now or Eddie’s absence won’t shake the world as much as he deserves it too. Eddie _deserves_ to leave an impact, and Richie is determined to give it to him. 

But then, Eddie evens out, stabilises, and Richie gets to occupy his surroundings again. He takes in the lavender of the walls, the gingham curtains, the vase on the beside: ready for flowers. 

He takes in the painting. 

The artist is familiar to him; so much time spent in LA meant he picked up certain things by osmosis, certain cultural landmarks that he may have paid attention to if he felt like living up to all the stereotypes that came with going through life as a Gay Man. 

It’s Keith Haring, and Richie supposes that _everyone_ recognises the style, the cheeriness, the blocked colours, the joyful motion lines. He just supposes not everyone recognises it for what it represents; a man who had AIDs breathing life into a world that was cruel to him. 

There’s an afternoon (and, this is a bad one) where he can’t bear to look at Eddie any longer, so he leans back in his chair and cranes his neck far back enough that the painting is the only thing in his sight, and he lets his mind wander.

He wonders whether the nurses, the doctors, the hospital’s architect, even, know who Keith Haring _was_ in the way that Richie knows him. He thinks of the irony, of a gay man’s art, finally displayed in Derry, but in a _hospital_ and a critical care unit at that, where it would have likely presided over more dying bodies than living ones; more decaying lives than breathing ones. He thinks of himself, as a kid in the eighties, looking at boys, his friends, _Eddie_ (and then stops that line of thought - _he can’t think of Eddie right now_ ) and how he would have felt to have seen a gay man’s art on the wall. And yes, maybe he is being reductive, taking everything Keith Haring stood for and dragging him down to just a Gay Man, but that is what Richie needed as a kid, and that is what Richie might need even now: for someone to say _“This man is gay, and look at what he made! What beauty! What joy! You are capable of beauty. You are capable of joy.”_

He also thinks of the implications of the actual content of the painting, called _Pop Shop I,_ according to the brief googling he slips his phone out of his pocket for. It’s focal point is, and _again,_ the irony is not lost on him, a figure with a hole in their chest. Two other figures hold hands through the hole, a gaping gash in the body, and Richie has to remind himself over and over again that this isn’t the painting of a dead man, of his murder: bright and amiable just the same. Though he has spent enough time glancing from Eddie’s abdomen under the light hospital blanket to the hole in the body of the Haring man, he can work out sure enough that this is a story of connection, friendship, love, family. He thinks of the losers. Would he stick his fist through the chest of a dead man just to hold their hands, just to check they were alive, just to feel their pulse? Yes, he thinks. Probably. 

He stares at the painting, and he wonders. 

He stares at the painting, and thinks. 

And so the day goes on. 

*

Maybe their story starts another way. 

It is his mother who tells him, when he’s a kid. Maggie Tozier, the most warm hearted woman Richie has ever known. Richie is thumbing through one of the books on the coffee table when he sees it, all golden and immense, layers and layers of couples holding each other compiled to create an endless silhouette. It’s Klimt’s _The Kiss,_ in full technicolour, and he runs his fingers over the brushstrokes, reverent, until he isn’t even sure what he’s looking at.

Maggie finds him, this kid with his jeans worn through at the knees, scuffed elbows, and eyes wide as saucers through his coke bottle glasses, finding religion in a painting that she keeps hidden inside a book.

“Hey, honey,” she says, cautious, careful not to disturb. “What have you got there?”

He turns to her; this woman who he loves and trusts with every inch of his small body. He looks at her, and then back at the painting underneath his small and curious hands. 

“Ma, what _is_ this?”

“It’s a painting,” she answers, kind. “By Gustav Klimt. It’s called _The Kiss_.”

  
And Richie can hear the italics of the title in her voice, can sense the importance of this information like it’s something vital he needs to absorb _right there_ , as he kneels on the wooden floor of his living room. 

“But,” he ventures further, “Why has someone drawn so many people kissing over each other? There’s lots of people kissing in this, why is it called _The_ Kiss instead of The Kiss _es_? I don’t understand, Ma.”

“Richie,” she says. “What do you know about twin flames?”

*

Eddie opens his eyes on a Thursday. 

Richie is in his chair, as always. It’s nearing three am, the sounds of the hospital keeping Richie company in the dead of night. 

He’s not holding Eddie’s hand when it happens, though he’s aching to. But sometimes he wants to hold Eddie so badly, he’s worried that if he gives in to the need then he’ll never be able to let go. So, he’s just leaning back in his chair, one arm across his body, hand clasping the elbow of the other, chin resting heavily on his fist. He’s watching Eddie, lost in thought, lost in _fear,_ as always. 

Eddie stirs. His eyes open, slowly, as if they’re uncommitted to the action, and they fall on Richie. Richie, whose heart is seizing up, and is jolting out of his chair towards the bed in shock. 

“Hey,” he says, stupidly, suddenly struck dumb by some emotion he’s unable to articulate. “Hey,” he repeats, like he’s trying to calm a spooked animal. “Hey, Eddie.”

Eddie’s turning his head this way and that, moving limply and unsure. 

“Wha-” he slurs, “Rich?”

“Hey, buddy.”

“Rich?” Eddie repeats, “Rich, you there?”

“Yeah,” he answers, heart in his throat. “I’m here, Eds.”

“Did we… did we…” Eddie is still looking all about Richie, eyes unfocused, and Richie can’t bear it, so he answers for him:

“Yeah, we did it, Eds,” he says. “We did it.”

Eddie seems to relax at this, falling deeper into the stiff hospital pillows, content. 

“Good,” he murmurs, drifting back into sleep. “’m glad you’re here. Had a dream ‘bout you.” 

Richie smiles as tears prick at his eyes. And then, Eddie adds:

“We were… we were pirates.”

And isn’t that just something. 

*

Maybe their story begins like this. 

Oceans are hungry, and heave through the world by brushing shoulders with each other. Brittle boats set sail in optimism, pushing forward into oblivion. Pirates polish swords and pierce their ears with golden hoops. 

There are two captains, rivals, whose feats against each other are immortalised in gossip across the seven seas. No matter how different the course each one sets for his crew, they find themselves hooked into the other ship’s orbit soon enough. 

If, when their ships anchor shoulder to shoulder in the quiet of the night, they grapple with ropes to swing into each other’s chambers, no one has to know. But _they_ know, and isn’t it so sweet to wake in another’s arms. 

Across the world, in a country neither would ever step foot in, a mountain rose up everytime their lips met under the light of a sunrise.

Centuries from these moments, in a time neither would ever come to comprehend, scholars would pour over diary entries salvaged from their wreckage. They would put words to the bond, ones that they were too scared to ever utter out loud, except into each other’s skin.

This was how it started.

  
  


More questions come years later, as they always do. 

Richie is at the kitchen table, homework laid out in front of him and pen busy in his hand. It is not such a surprising sight to see; despite what his friends say, he is _smart,_ in a way that sometimes still surprises Richie himself when he opens his mouth to answer a question in class. 

Tonight it is math, and that is good because Richie _likes_ math. Math is logical, and simple, and makes sense to him in a way lots of things don’t seem to in his day to day life. 

Maggie is whistling in the kitchen as he works, a sound that helps to calm the rapid fire of his mind whenever he hears it. This is why he likes to work in the kitchen, really; the sounds of other people close by always does something to ease him, quieting his bouncing leg or putting a stopper in his anxieties.

And Richie needs this today. It’s been a day that defies logic and reason, and he needs to forget about it for a little while. He needs math and it’s clear numbers, and his mother, and the music she makes when she’s above the stove. 

But Maggie notices, of _course_ she does. 

“You alright, love?” 

Richie turns towards her, quick as a flash, feeling like he’s been caught out. 

“Yeah,” he says, turning back to his worksheet, a caricature of casual. 

A beat. And then:

“Why?”

Maggie smiles, facing the oven. Richie reminds her so much of herself.

“You’re just quiet, that’s all. What’s going on in that clever head of yours?”

Richie rolls his eyes, an exaggerated pantomime of annoyance at his mother’s veiled praise. It’s okay though - both Toziers know that in reality he appreciates it when his grades are noticed.

He goes back to work for a little bit, with the knowledge that he’s been offered an olive branch of sorts. He knows that it’s his own flesh and blood that can read him the best, pick up the words not said in his silences. And Eddie, he thinks. Eddie always knows when something’s off with him. But he can’t talk to Eddie about this, can he? Not really. 

He keeps his head resolutely tipped downwards towards his work, eyes stubbornly trained on his pen, but he asks, because he knows that his mother will have the answers. And he _needs_ the answers, like a moth to a flame.

“How did you know?”

Maggie answers with her back still turned to him. She can see that this is a conversation her son can’t have face to face, and she is not going to take that small measure of comfort away from him. 

“Know what, darling?”

Richie’s grip on his pen tightens, a frustrated sigh building. He still can’t say it. Why can’t he _say it?_

“You _know_ what, Ma.”

And then a few agonising seconds pass, where Richie is certain he’s fucked everything up. It’s a personal thing, something dirty and taboo. Most people don’t tend to ask about it, but Richie needs to know. 

But Richie hasn’t fucked anything up, of course not. Maggie just needs to collect her thoughts before answering, thinking of which words would string together best in order to explain years and years of history and mysticism, and how the time feels like it could just unravel from two hands holding each other. 

“I think it’s different for everyone,” she says finally, knowing that it’s not enough of an answer but also unsure of what Richie is looking for with his question. “With your father and me, it was slow. We didn’t realise at first but… it sort of creeps up on you. Like the first few weeks of Spring, where you don’t realise it’s getting warmer, until one day you wake up and the grass in the garden isn’t frosty like it usually is. And some people say they dream of them, but I’ve never been able to remember my dreams.”

“Dream of them _how?_ ”

“What you did together, before.” She turns now, looks at Richie. He meets her eyes and the look on his face is pained. “Does that help?”

“Yeah,” he says and puts his face into his hands. “It’s just…”

When he trails off, she finishes for him. 

“Not the answer you wanted?” 

A silence stretches out in the kitchen, taut between them.

“What do you do,” he starts, voice muffled by his hands, “when you know --”

He stops, steadies himself and starts again. 

“When you _know,_ but it’s wrong. When it’s not like the people you read about, but you can feel that it’s them. What do you _do,_ Ma?”

Maggie crosses the kitchen and wraps her arm around him, a hug at an awkward angle - her son, seventeen but fragile in the kitchen chair, and she, standing before him. He leans into her, unable to stop the tears that are now falling quiet and subdued down his face like a dam’s been broken. And Maggie knows what this is about, even with Richie talking in circles, because she _knows_ her son. 

“It is _not_ wrong, you hear me?” She waits to feel Richie’s nod before continuing. “It can’t be wrong, whoever it is. That isn’t how it works. People can talk all they want, tell lies about God, or the fucking balance of the universe or what _ever_ , but it is _not true._ ” 

“I’ve never heard you swear before,” Richie smiles before laughing, quiet and dampened by the tears. 

“And you never will again,” she smiles down at her son.

“Thank you,” he says. She wipes tears from his cheek before tilting his chin back so she can meet his eyes. 

“Eddie?” She asks. 

He pulls his chin away from her grasp, but nods anyway, looking at the floor. 

This is when he knew for certain. 

*

The prince is called Edward. 

The farmhand knows this, because everyone knows the prince’s name. The farmhand knows this, because everyone knows the prince’s face. The farmhand knows this, because he keeps the name for himself, like precious metal, and when he thinks he’s had a good day with the horses, or is congratulated by one of the older stable boys for his work, he lets himself say it aloud to himself at night. 

Richard is nineteen and he thinks the world might have been made for him. It’s not too far outside of the realm of possibility; everyone knows that magic is real, and everyone knows that twin flames are real -- even if no one dares to discuss either phenomenon when the sun is still bright. 

(There are certain magicks and treasures that are supposed to be kept for when the nights get too dark, for special occasions; like a Sunday best.) 

Richard thinks the world was made for him because he keeps catching the prince looking at him. 

He wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t a big deal either: Richard is _sensible,_ despite what the knights say when they train nearby the stables. He knows that he is somewhere near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the food chain in the kingdom; he might be employed by the Crown, but a royal farmhand is a farmhand just the same. That is to say, he knows he’s nothing special and has come to terms with the fact that he never will be. That is to say, he is _not_ one to get his hopes up.

But he has noticed this. 

It’s happened more than a few times now, and it always goes the same. Sometimes Richard will need to help out at a feast if one of the kitchen boys is ill - which is a suspiciously common occurrence. So Richard will spend his midafternoon serving tables, and topping up goblets. And every now and again, he will feel someone’s eyes on him. So he’ll turn; a quick quirk of the head, nothing to alert attention, and it’ll be _him._

Prince Edward will be watching him, _regarding him,_ even, like he’s something worth looking at. When they make eye contact, Richard will mostly turn away, suddenly overcome with an emotion he knows isn’t safe to put a name to. But sometimes, something pushes him to tilt his head in question. And when he does, Edward will flash him a small grin, a sweet and furtive thing that makes Richard’s chest flood with an earthy kind of warmth. 

And as Richard returns the smile, he will think to himself, surely that warmth is what the choirs sing songs about. 

*

Eddie wakes again in the late morning of that dreadful Thursday, after his dream about pirates.

Richie is there, as ever, hands curling around a beaten paperback Mike had lent him. He’s never been much of a reader, but these past few endless weeks at Eddie’s bedside have left him hungry, _ravenous,_ even _,_ for fantasy and fiction. So he’s reading _Lord of the Flies_ , enraptured, leaning down every minute or so to grab the mug of tea at home beside his ankle. 

It has been his morning routine for several days now. It’s nearing monotonous, but Richie cannot find it inside himself to be bored. At least the practise he’s had at playing bedside means he’s kicking less drinks over. He’ll curb his fidgeting for Eddie; if he woke to spilt coffee on the floor of his ward Richie would be falling over himself in apologies. 

He’s about a quarter way through the book when he’s startled out of concentration. 

“We were supposed to read that in AP English, dickward.”

Richie startles, almost dropping the book and kicking his mug, but he manages to save both in an aborted motion.

“I did read it, dumbass,” he says without thinking. “I’m just _re_ reading it. It’s something we intellectuals like to do from time to time.”

Eddie is rolling his eyes before Richie even finishes his sentence, and then he’s wincing like it hurts to do so.

“Hey careful there, buddy,” Richie is out of his chair and leaning closer to Eddie as soon as his brain kicks into gear and recognises what’s going on.

Eddie is suddenly looking this way and that, panic rising as he realises where he is, and what the plain walls of the hospital mean for him.

“Shit,” he says, “shit, Rich, how long have I been out?”

Richie’s reaching for the call button, quickly understanding that he won’t be able to have this conversation without a nurse present to talk Eddie down, to mediate. 

“A couple… weeks,” he says finally, unable to lie, unable to meet his gaze.

“Weeks?” Eyes wide. “I was in a fucking _coma?”_ He says the word likes its dirty, and all Richie can do is to walk himself back into the wall when nurses come rushing into the room and start to check all sorts of vitals that make Richie’s head swim. 

He knew this day would come. He knows that when it’s just him and Eddie alone in the room together again, questions will start, and Richie will be unable to answer many of them, or able but unwilling. 

Eddie’s bed is flocked for a good fifteen minutes, full of notes on clipboards and questions directed to the mostly woozy Eddie occupying it. Richie spends the time watching, wary, occasionally meeting Eddie’s eyes over heads crowding together. 

And through it all, Richie’s heart can’t help but hurt, because this is _Eddie._ This is Eddie, son of Sonia Kaspbrak, and Richie knows that he must hate this fussing, this sterile environment in which he has no agency. 

Finally, the horizon clears, and Eddie and Richie are left, two ships at shore. 

Eddie breaks the silence.

“Two weeks, huh?”

And all Richie can think to say is:

“Yeah.”

And then the questioning:

“What have you been doing?”

There’s something tangible laying dormant under Eddie’s voice and words, but Richie is unsure whether he wants to wake it just yet, so he puts off the inevitable for a number of precious seconds by taking a meandering walk back to his chair, lifting Mike’s blanket as he does so to wrap it around his shoulders. Small comforts. 

He kicks at the book, abandoned at his feet. 

“This,” he says, looking at the floor.

“Richie,” he says, quietly wounded at the bleak honesty in his voice. “What about the others?”

“They went,” he meets Eddie’s eyes at last, and burns at the subtle warmth he finds there. “They went home.”

“But not you?” 

Richie smiles, but it doesn’t meet his eyes.

“But not me,” he repeats.

Eddie’s brows furrow. 

“Why not, Rich?” His voice is thin but the intensity in his eyes tells him everything he needs to know. Everything Eddie knows. 

“You know why, Eds,” he says, shrugging. There’s a need inside him to pull his shoulders tight, make himself smaller, and he is defenceless against it. “Don’t make me say it.”

A silence stretches between them. 

Finally, Eddie breaks it. 

“So, is the coffee here shit or what?”

Richie grins, and takes the olive branch. 

“I’ve been sampling the menu,” he pauses, feigning forgetfulness. And then: “Instant coffee black, instant coffee with a little milk and... instant coffee with a lot of milk.”

“What’s the verdict?”

“I’d rather take a shot of my own piss than drink out of a cardboard cup ever again.”

“The obvious choice,” Eddie replies wryly.

“Well, Eds, I am a man of the people, after all.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. 

“Asshole.”

Richie feels his shoulders drop a little at the barb. He’d been unaware that he had even been tense, but realises that his muscles had braced themselves as soon as he’d heard Eddie’s voice. 

But there had been no need to worry. 

He and Eddie? 

  
There would _always_ be a comfort there. That’s just how they were. That’s just how it’d always been.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are appreciated <3
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](https://luckycharmr.tumblr.com/)


End file.
